Max Payne 3 delayed and other news from Take-Two earnings call

Publisher expands on sales and drops some new info as E3 approaches

After listening to what was called an “exciting” earnings call by someone who’s listened to far more than I have, a few interesting facts can be gleaned from Take-Two’s second quarter earnings call to investors (and media obviously). After the publisher crowed about just how awesome Red Dead Redemption is doing in sales and critical response, they mentioned the biggest downer of the call, which was Max Payne 3 being delayed again, this time out of fiscal 2010. For non-business smarty-pants, this means sometime after October 31, 2010. Whether that results in it being a big November title or if it’s going to slip into 2011, they wouldn’t go into any more details, but don’t expect to touch this one any time soon.

Other than that, the company figureheads had lots of good news to report: Michael Jordan on the cover of NBA 2K11, a new Carnival Games title that’s creatively called New Carnival Games, Civilization V having some cool bonuses for Steam buyers, they have high hopes for XCOM, a Mafia II demo is getting released in August, Red Dead Redemption sold a shitload, plus a bunch of numbers I deemed too boring to remember. Sadly for you Rockstar fans out there, news was scant from the big name developer, other than Take-Two saying LA Noire was still on track for this year (I’ll believe it when I see it), Agent is still a PS3-exclusive, and further reconfirming Rockstar, though not Take-Two, was skipping E3.

The only real bummer they had to comment on was that while profitable, BioShock 2 wasn’t the blockbuster they expected it to be. I’m not all that surprised, as TalkRadar fans will note it routinely shows up in the Game Deals segment priced at under $30, but it’s too bad, as the game really was amazing. Still, Take-Two says they’re committed to the brand, so don’t think you’ve seen the last of that franchise.